Saturday, January 14, 2006

This Little Piggy went to Market...

So in the Eastern Region Mus, Ama, and Efia and I al went to market (this is a different town and a different day than our trip to Konongo.)

In big cities like Cape Coast, everyday is a market day. But in the small towns and villages we were visiting, they have a specifis market day, and so if you need something that you can't find in one of the small shops, you figure out which nearby town is having a market day and head over there.

I wanted to take pictures on the sly-I know that there are ethical issues with that and I sturggled with them- but if I overtly take photos, then everyone jumps around and poses and smiles and I get to have a million photos of kids jumping and smiling and none of people doing what they normally do. So I walked around with my camera on, but hanging from my neck, ad just snapping photos at random without looking.

Here are my favorites...







These women figured it out pretty quickly- they didn't mind, they just thought it was funny that I was taking pictures while I was looking in the opposite direction. When word spread that I was taking photos, the market women all wanted me to take theirs.


In Ghana, vendors in the market are always women. Occasionally you see a young man in his 20s walking around selling something from a basket on his head (like women's underwear- talk about a weird and embarassing situation... Who wants to buy their panties from abasket on a young guys head?) But mostly those young men are from other nearby countries, where men are vendors.


Random Thoughts #2

I’ve been pondering- I’ve been actually thinking about this since the last time I came to Ghana- is manual versus intellectual work (and in intellectual work, I’m including anything that is more cerebral or even performance oriented than physically strenuous. As such, I’m including most service jobs.) And I’m going to say right now that this is an oversimplification and I admit it.

But why is it that we don’t value manual labor as much as intellectual labor? It’s not just Western European culture, either- I see the same thing in Ghana. But it makes no sense to me. Without manual labor, there would be no intellectual labor, for who can right books or invent things without food in their bellies or a roof over their heads? Furthermore, intellectual labor is rendered meaningless without physical labor. Without an electrician, a computer programmer’s PC is useless. What good is a newly invented car when no one has built any roads to drive it on?

I know the obvious answer to why intellectual work is valued more is about human progress; if no one did intellectual work, the human race wouldn’t progress. If you earned more respect as a farmer than as an inventor, why would anyone invent?

But see, in that answer lies the assumption that intellectual work is more difficult than manual work. While it seems true in America today- that people who don’t continue with their schooling “take the easy way out-” I’ve spent enough time with old women bent with machetes and hoes, clearing a field, to necessarily believe that manual labor’s easy.

I think, in many ways, intellectual work is easier than physical work. Perhaps I’m just better suited for intellectual work and that’s why I think it’s easy. But regardless, no one can deny the fact that while we can live without the fruits of intellectual work- newspapers and schooling and paintings- no one can live without food, without shelter.

So if I would die without the farmer, but would just be a little less informed without the news anchors. I wouldn’t have clean water without the plumber, but I would just be a little more bored without the travel agent. Yet why do these second jobs carry more prestige, and often, a higher pay check?

Random Thoughts #1

I realize that my posts so far have been a little superficial so I thought I’d post more of a reflection this time.

Some thoughts that have been going through my head here… Well, first off, let me start by talking of something I read that really provoked me, so you all know where these ideas are coming from. I was reading “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs (many of you probably remember me buying it before I left and talking excitedly about it). Well, the book stinks. I haven’t read all of it, but just the first chapter made me lose all respect for the author- essentially, he and I don’t approach the world carrying the same set of assumptions (thank God).

For example (and this will all tie in to Ghana- I promise), he talks about workers in factory sweatshops in Bangladesh, saying what a good opportunity it is for the workers because they make, on average, eight times more than the average agricultural worker in Bangladesh. However, he completely ignores the fact that those two workers will have a completely different cost of living. Let’s use Ghana as an example.

Accra is the capital of Ghana, as well as its largest city. Accra is also notoriously the most expensive city in Ghana, and the cost of everything from rent to food to clothes to transportation steeply increases in Accra.

Then let’s compare the family of farmers I stayed with in Nkwanta. The cost of living in Nkwanta is extremely low. This family, while producing cocoa as a cash crop, also grows corn, tubers, vegetables, and fruit as well as raising goats and chickens for meat. They own their own house. They have no running water or electricity. They use buses and taxis; they don’t own a car.

So how much money would a family in Accra need to survive? They would pay rent, electric bills, and water bills on top of the expensive food, clothes, transportation, etc. I couldn’t give you an exact number since I haven’t done a study on this- I’m just giving the facts.

Then the family of farmers. Their energy costs are measured in ounces of kerosene for lamps and lanterns and pounds of charcoal for cooking- with the occasional set of batteries for a radio. They buy very little of their food and eat what they grow. Of course, they’ll still need some money- for clothes and utensils, school fees and visits to doctors. But most of their day to day needs are taken care of. No rent to pay. Very few bills.

So saying that a street hawker in Accra makes 8 times more than a farmer in the Eastern Region is essentially a meaningless statistic; it gives you no framework to know which person lives in poverty, which person has a harder time meeting the bare necessities of life. It sounds like a consequential, but really tells you nothing without more information.

He also talked about GNP, another meaningless statistical tool. While it tells you how much money came into the country, it gives you no clue as to where and whom it went to; therefore, it gives no measure of people’s living condition, income, or the level of poverty experienced. So if, for example, the sweatshops in Bangladesh are making a small elite much more wealthy, while keeping the majority of the population just as poor or making them even poorer, the GNP can still rise and the world will regard that as a good thing. Even if the majority of the country’s population is still struggling for necessities, perhaps even becoming more desperately poor, a rise in the GNP is a good thing.

But enough about the book. Time to get less political and more philosophical…

This line of thought brought me to ponder the whole idea of wealth. Going back to the family of farmers, they didn’t seem to feel impoverished or deprived. Living with them, I certainly didn’t feel deprived. The family is, overall, well-liked and respected. They live in a comfortably large compound, and seem to have plenty to eat. In fact, they have enough for their large family of 12, plus enough to share with people like me and Mus, or the 4 teachers and their families that live there. Plus various grandchildren and nephews and such also live with them.

Still, I imagine the family has very little disposable income- in fact, all the families were considering how to raise money to have electricity installed while I was there. To these families, $10 is a lot. So are they poor? Are they impoverished? Do they have a comfortable standard of living?

I don’t know how to answer these questions. I mean, they are basic questions- what is wealth? Is it measured in happiness? In the quality of life? In money? In possessions? In net worth? I mean the net worth of these people is probably pretty decent, though they have little disposable income…

Kind of like the old one I go back to… What is success? How does a person live a successful life?